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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Comments on reads 4/19 II

Marc Fink reports at the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch that Best Buy contributed as a Platinum sponsor to the annual banquet of CAIR’s Minnesota chapter this past February. Best Buy maintains its corporate headquarters in suburban Minneapolis, so this story hits close to home. The company is dealing with a few other public relations issues deriving from the its executive leadership and business struggles, so this story has flown under the radar.

The featured speaker at CAIR Minnesota’s annual banquet, incidentally, was Feisal Abdul Rauf, best known as the guy who was leading the efforts to build the 13-story Islamic community center Park51 (the Ground Zero Mosque) two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

What’s wrong with funneling money to an organization that holds itself out as a “civil rights group”? Isn’t it a worthy object of corporate philanthropy? Well, no.

Readers will recall that the United States named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation, a fundraiser for Hamas that the government shut down in the aftermath of 9/11. I wrote about CAIR’s identification as an unindicted co-conpirator of the HLF in “Coming clean about CAIR.”

FP: Well, if the US government is pumping billions into Egypt’s MB, who is holding Americans hostage for ransom and declares Jihad on the West, why shouldn’t Best Buy fund the American Hamas? See my comment in the previous post about letting the barbarians in—here’s more:

Ben Shapiro reports that the departure of MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters has done nothing to cure its anti-Semitism. Rosenberg was a symptom and not the problem itself (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t end with MJ Rosenberg.

Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, one of the faces of the organization, has a dicey record when it comes to Israel and the Jews. On September 11, 2001, he wrote a piece for Salon.com defending American Muslims from the supposed anti-Muslim hysteria brewing. In that piece, he recounted a Muslim rally in Paterson, New Jersey:

"We won't rest until all the Jews are dead," said a burly young man. "Shame on America," said another bitter-faced youth. "For helping Israel to kill Palestinians," said a third.

In the wake of the WTC attacks, however, those brash sentiments were muted.

“We won’t rest until all the Jews are dead” is not a “brash sentiment.” It is openly genocidal anti-Semitism. But not to Eric Boehlert, apparently.

I used to wonder why Andrew Breitbart used to constantly attack Bohlert, while he rarely said a word about Rosenberg. I suspect that Ben Shapiro is in the process of explaining that mystery. What's worse, Media Matters clearly has the ear of the Obama administration.

The head of NATO called on China and Russia on Thursday to help fund Afghan security after 2014, as the alliance tries to rally contributions from a wider range of sources before most foreign combat troops pull out of Afghanistan.

FP: Pathetic. I’m sure the Russian are very eager to pour more money into Afghanistan, after they left with their tail between their legs, rather than let the West fail too.

That is actually an easy question to answer. The Obama administration has heaped trillions of dollars in new debt on the heads of your children, and mine. That debt will be repaid with interest, at rates far higher than those that are now artificially maintained by the Fed. The $15 trillion that our children now owe, and the many trillions more that President Obama and the Democrats will add if they get their way, will impoverish the next generation.

FP: Americans don’t realize that neither party cares about their children futures. The pro and con positions on budget deficits have absolutely nothing to do with the children.

From Bikya Masr last week, in a story that really flew under the radar:

The US State Department broke with procedure last week when it ordered US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) not to conduct a secondary inspection on members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) on their way to visit government officials in the US.

It is not clear where the order was issued from.

This happened despite the fact that one member of the delegation had been implicated – though not charged – in a US child pornography investigation, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The person of interest to the US State Department was Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, who was part of a pornography investigation in Pennsylvania. He was the senior member in the four-person FJP delegation, which held court with academic groups and met with senior officials at the White House and State Department.

Dardery had lived in the United States long enough to attain legal permanent residency, known as a Green Card. That status lapsed after he left the country for more than six months. The child pornography investigation took place during Dardery’s time in the US and was so noted in his immigration file. It surfaced when CBP officials learned of his pending visit.

A US official said that extra inspection is standard operating procedure when a foreign visitor has been tied to criminal or terrorist activities. “Secondary inspections” involve going through the visitor’s baggage and viewing the contents of computers and other electronic devices to search for evidence of illicit activity. Agents would typically search other members of the party to ensure Dardery did not hand off his computer equipment to an associate to avoid detection.

In addition, the Brotherhood’s relationship with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas would have triggered extra scrutiny for the incoming delegation. But that “secondary inspection” never happened, a law enforcement source said. The State Department ordered CBP not to do it.

The State Department issued a cable specifically barring customs officials from carrying out any inspections of Dardery and the other members of the delegation on their arrival at New York’s JFK Airport.

The Brotherhood recently won a near majority in parliamentary elections – a sweep by any evaluation.

Ironically, they are keen on introducing legislation to block Internet access to pornography in Egypt.

Five years ago, when Mitt Romney opened his Presidential campaign at the Henry Ford Museum, which is named for one of America's most notorious anti-Semites, one of the first to criticize him was Ira Forman, then director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, and now President Obama's liaison to the Jewish community, was the first out of the gate to criticize Romney. Now, with President Obama about to appear at the same museum, Forman and the NJDC are both silent.

…

The NJDC has become Obama's Jewish council, with a commitment to liberalism and to Obama, but no commitment to anything Jewish. Is anyone really surprised?

FP: Yuckh!

And speaking of hypocrisy and disgust, they become worse the higher the Jew’s position in society:

Friedman knows very well that rocks are not a peaceful means to a peaceful end. He was attacked by Palestinian Arab rock throwers who stoned his car on Jerusalem’s Salahadin Street in 1988, just before leaving his job as the Jerusalem-based bureau chief of the Times. Friedman did not think of rocks then as peaceful protest.

“If I had a gun I would have blasted the faces of all those sons of bitches,” Friedman reportedly yelled, returning from the Arab side of town to the Times office, then at Rivlin Street in the mostly Jewish downtown center. Apparently, he never mentioned the incident—or his strong reaction to it—in his many books or columns.

The attitude of outrage, recalls another famous Jewish reporter and his response to being targeted in different circumstances. Recalling his captivity in Iraq during the first Gulf War, Bob Simon recalled:

But hardly well, for Simon and crew were soon shifted to an intelligence center in downtown Baghdad. "Here the guards were animals—all they did was shout and beat," he says. One day an officer "grabbed me by the face, forced my mouth open and said, 'Yehudi, Yehudi,' which means 'Jew.' Then he spit at me and slapped me. I feared for my life, but I would have killed him if I could, with no more remorse than killing a cockroach."

I remember once watching a CBS report in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Israel and watching Simon smugly reporting on Israeli who were outraged by the violence, as if there was something extreme about their reaction. Fortunately, when other people are attacked, Friedman and Simon are both able to maintain their professional detachment.

The alleged killers of Asher Palmer and his son Yonatan [see 25-Sep-11: "Only" rock throwers - but now a father and his infant son are dead] were in front of a military court again this morning. [We went there to give some badly-needed moral support to the Palmers. The process of getting into the courtroom was challenging and after an hour of standing around frustrated and hot, we left. When we hear how today's proceedings, now underway, went, we will report.] Even if you're not a New York Times reporter, sometimes you actually need to see and meet and speak with the family of the victims of Thomas Friedman's rocks.

Jews that will not show solidarity with other Jews even after they underwent the same genocidal hatred. Yuckh squared!